A meeting between the presidents of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo will not take place as planned on Sunday, both countries said, dashing hopes of a deal to curb Congo’s M23 rebel conflict that has displaced more than 1.9 million people.<\/p>\n
The event was meant to see a rare face-to-face meeting between the central African leaders in Angola, where\u00a0long-running negotiations\u00a0have sought to\u00a0ease tensions\u00a0between the neighbours linked to the almost three-year M23 insurgency.<\/p>\n
Expectations that a deal would be signed had raised hopes of an end to a standoff that has further destabilised eastern Congo and\u00a0fanned fears\u00a0of a broader conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region akin to two devastating wars between 1996 and 2003 that cost millions of lives.<\/p>\n
“The cancellation of this tripartite is caused by the refusal of the Rwandan delegation to take part,” the government of Congo said in a statement.<\/p>\n
It said on Saturday Rwanda had made the signing of a peace agreement conditional on Congo holding direct talks with M23 rebels, which Congo rejected.<\/p>\n
Rwanda\u2019s foreign minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, said the meeting had been postponed, but made no further comment.<\/p>\n
The peace plan envisaged Rwanda dismantling what it has called its defensive measures in the conflict in exchange for Congo eliminating a Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which had attacked Tutsis in both countries.<\/p>\n
Congo, the United Nations, and others accuse Rwanda of fuelling the rebellion in North Kivu province by deploying its own troops and weapons to support M23, a group formed to defend the interests of Congolese Tutsis, the ethnic group to which Rwandan President Paul Kagame belongs.<\/p>\n
Rwanda denies this, just saying it has taken its defensive measures, and accuses Congo of recruiting FDLR militants to fight on its side. There were\u00a03,000-4,000 Rwandan troops\u00a0in Congo with “de facto control” over M23 operations, U.N. experts said this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A meeting between the presidents of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo will not take place as planned on Sunday, both countries said, dashing hopes of a deal to curb Congo’s M23 rebel conflict that has displaced more than 1.9 million people. The event was meant to see a rare face-to-face meeting between the central […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[72,1621,140],"class_list":["post-14513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-m23-rebels","tag-rwanda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}